Sims, 98, nurtured a 76-year marriage

Mamie Meroney Sims, who returned to college at Our Lady of the Lake University in her mid-50s to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, died July 4 at 98.

Mamie Meroney Sims, who returned to college at Our Lady of the Lake University in her mid-50s to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, died July 4 at 98.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Photo: Courtesy Photo

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Mamie Meroney Sims, who returned to college at Our Lady of the Lake University in her mid-50s to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, died July 4 at 98.

Mamie Meroney Sims, who returned to college at Our Lady of the Lake University in her mid-50s to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, died July 4 at 98.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Sims, 98, nurtured a 76-year marriage

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For all of Mamie Meroney Sims’ accomplishments — raising three children, helping to establish two Methodist churches and returning to college in her 50s to earn a bachelor’s degree — perhaps the most significant was her marriage of 76 years.

Meeting her future husband before the United States entered World War II, Sims married him after an 18-month courtship.

The secret to such a long-lasting union, according to her husband, James M. Sims, was that “we liked each other,” he said. “And we loved each other, too.”

And, with her husband working into his 90s, Mamie Sims and her husband “enjoyed the time they spent together, but also enjoyed their time apart,” said her daughter, Anastatia “Ann” Sims.

Mamie Sims died July 4 at 98.

Although her mother died when she was 7, Mamie Sims, who was the youngest of four children, had a happy childhood in Verbena, Alabama.

“She had a stepmother, and a cousin who lived with them for a while who was 10 or 12 years older than she was” and who had a great influence on her, Ann Sims said.

As a youngster, Mamie Sims skipped three grades at her hometown school and enrolled at what was then Alabama College for Women when she was just 15.

Dropping out to begin teaching, Sims taught school for about five years before meeting her future husband and marrying in 1941.